


This Old House

by Katowisp



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Creepy, Gen, Haunted Houses, Haunting, Hunters & Hunting, Monster of the Week, Monsters, POV Outsider, this house
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-30 16:01:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17831684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katowisp/pseuds/Katowisp
Summary: It wasn't always a haunted house. Once, it had been happy, when a family had lived and loved in it. And when they died, the house had grown lonely, and did what it could to fill its empty rooms again.





	This Old House

**Author's Note:**

> POV from a haunted house

At the crossroads of 58 and 24, a good twenty miles from anywhere else, there is an abandoned collection of buildings. The individual pumps of an empty gas station stand silent, broken guard over the crossroads. Their white paint is now chipped and faded, and the dials in the glasses faces were broken long ago by children who always find sport in breaking things.

Across the street is a sagging house. It had once been a happy yellow, but the wearing, patient hand of time had stripped the paint from the wood, leaving the weathered sidingchipped and bare. The porch has grown tired, and the beams have splintered in on themselves. A large maple tree stands too close to the house, and on fall nights it scratches at broken windows with patient desperation. The windows are wide and long and they sag as the house has begun to collapse under its own weight. They stare out at the world, black and sharp. 

The house is haunted. But not in the way it wishes. Its family is gone, and their graves are now overgrown and forgotten in a fenced patch not far behind the house. There are generations there. The builder and his wife, and all their children. There is a baby, gripped by his young mother. The house remembers that day. The sorrow and pain that had emanated from the survivors became a part of the house, and even now, it can still be felt. After that day, the children moved out, and when the man grew old and died, no one came to replace him.

And so when the old man died, so had the house. But it hadn't known it yet. And it waited with quiet hope for the children to come back, but the children never came, and the gas station the family had run fell into disrepair. The maple tree, unchecked, grew too high and too close. The dirt road was paved over, and cars passed by in greater volume than ever. But nobody ever stopped. 

The sorrow ate at the house. It became the only thing it knew. It seeped into its structure and clawed at its wooden skeleton. The front steps grew tired, and the front porch sagged and then broke. The house looked out, but no one ever looked back in. 

One day, a young couple came, and the house felt something it hadn’t felt in a long time. It cherished their voices against its walls, and it enjoyed what it meant to have purpose, again. He hoped they would move in, and make the house a home. It had enjoyed being a home, and missed it very much. But the house soon realized from their conversation that they had no intent to come back, and when the pair made to explore the basement, well, it was not fault of the house that the stairs collapsed under their weight. And if the house felt bad that he died when from landing wrong and broke his neck, and she had died more slowly from a broken leg and no way to get out, well, it was okay, because even though it couldn’t offer a place for them in life, it had become their home in death. 

Next came a smattering of boys, who threw rocks at the remaining windows, and the house was very angry. It has been proud of its windows, and understood that time took its toll, but that didn’t mean that little boys could. So, when one of them inched inside after a dare (a triple dog dare, and even the house knew how grave that was), well, the house couldn’t be blamed exactly when the old Grandfather’s Clock had a board weaken under it, crushing the boy to death when he grew too close. After all, he had given the couple a son, and there were worse things. The house remembered how happy the builder had been on the day his wife had given him a son. 

After that, the county sent out inspectors who boarded the windows and doors and pasted signs on the front door indicating that the house was condemned and should not be entered under any circumstances. 

The ghost of the boy followed one of the inspectors around forlornly, and it was only later, when the little ghost stood at the window and cried as the truck pulled away, that the house discovered the inspector was the birth father of the son. The house felt no remorse; the father should have taught his son to respect other people’s properties. 

The house had worried that being marked for destruction would doom it, but it only encouraged teens to come in greater numbers, and soon his family had grown by one, a dark-skinned girl who would be better without her loser boyfriend, the house knew. She was not far in physical age from the first couple, but they were older now than they had been before. The house felt she would be a good fit. She cut her radial artery when climbing out the dining room window, and bled to death, stuck in the gaping maw of the house. 

The ghosts drifted the halls forlornly, and the house understood their sorrow and tried to stand tall, if only for them. It could be a home, if they let it. It was not the same as living souls, not for them, and not for it, but it was better than being nothing at all. 

And one day, a pair of brothers came to the house. They respected it in a way the others had not, and ringed the house with salt and spoke ancient Latin words. The souls of those who had been trapped dissipated in flashes of glowing, white light. The brothers coated the base of the home with gasoline, and the older one threw a match. The house raged, but because the brothers had not come inside, it had no way to make them part of the family. It could not scream, because it had no mouth, but when the remaining existing windows exploded from heat, and the younger one was cut on the face, the house felt a sense of satisfaction. 

As the house burned, it thought of those who had made it home, but now it was only tinder. The fire raged through the empty rooms, it consumed the blood left on the broken window and the broken steps and the Grandfather Clock. The brothers watched, only leaving when the fire trucks came. 

Fire and water finished the job that time had begun, and the house collapsed in on itself. Men came and pushed the rest of the house into its basement, and covered over the foundation with dirt. 

In time, as grasses grew over it and several saplings took root, it was as if it had never been at all.

But the house remembered, and it waited.


End file.
